


surely this must be my masterpiece

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 10:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11206437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: She can’t remember the last time she felt anything like this - if ever. It’s all consuming, the first real true burst of inspiration that she’s had in years and because of another person. Because of him.





	surely this must be my masterpiece

**Author's Note:**

> For Alexa, who has championed this ship so much on twitter that I wanted to write a thing. This probably contradicts half your head canons but I hope you can enjoy it anyways.

“All the art in the room, and the most beautiful painting I see is right in front of me.”

It’s a smooth line. She’ll have to give him credit for that one. 

She’s heard plenty of variations of it before.

Agnes is good at this, the standing next to a painting with a glass of wine her in her hand, smiling when some rich gentleman comes up and wants to pretend that he knows something about modern art. It’s exactly why her roommate had asked her to come to the opening of the gallery, because Agnes could sell a painting to a blind man.

Though it helps if they can see her. 

She knows she’s beautiful, there was a reason she spent an hour picking out what dress to wear before coming to these sorts of things, falling back on favored floral patterns more often than not. Because men like this didn’t come here to know art, they came here for other reasons. 

“Am I supposed to fall in love with you now?” 

He’s not a bad looking man. Her type, though her type has always been a bit older, more settled in life, the type of man that knew how to treat a woman right. The best part is that he seems sincere, almost awkward, as though he had not expected that line to lead to any sort of conversation.

“Holden Radcliffe.”

“Agnes,” she offers her own name with a tilt of her head. 

A silent invitation for him to step into her space which he takes. 

“Do you like it?”

“The art,” he replies, voice hesitating like a question. 

“Yes,” she say, the  _ obviously  _ going unspoken, “I personally do. This thing took hours, blue paint everywhere for days, one would hope that people at least like it.”

“I do,” he insists. 

She’s certain he doesn’t.

Modern art is an acquired taste.

He doesn’t look like he’s acquired it yet.

She can’t help herself, “That right? Tell me your favorite part.”

He does not flounder like she had expected, though he still has no clue what he’s talking about. “I like your brush strokes, they’re delicate, expressing the true meaning of the art, the contrast between the paint and the canvas, striking and yet drawing in the eyes. Much like the rest of your art-” 

“Oh none of these are mine.”

“They’re not?” He sounds genuinely surprised.

She likes the sound of it. 

Genuine. Something so rare to find these days. 

She shakes her head, “I’m a friend of the artists, my showcase isn’t actually for a few weeks, if you’d like I could introduce her to you. You could tell her all about - what was it? The delicate brushstrokes.” 

He grimaces a little. It’s charming. Before saying, “I’m going to be honest with you, Agnes.” 

“Oh please do,” Agnes insists, “Nothing would make me happier.” 

“I know nothing about art.” 

“Truly a surprise, I had no idea until just now that you mentioned it,” she replies, not bothering to hide the teasing note in her voice. “And here I was thinking you were an art professor.” 

“I am a professor.” 

“Not of art.”

“No, a sort of engineering,” he says, “It’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it,” the words are out of her mouth in an instant. 

A challenge. 

“I work on engineering prosthetic limbs and the like, alternations to the human for but not for purpose rather for the artistic quality.”

“So you are an artist after all.”

“I consider it more my passion project-”

“I like that phrasing ‘ _ passion project _ ’ mind if I steal it?”

“It’s yours,” he relents, hands up like he’s offering the words to her. 

Maybe more than that. 

She meets his eyes with a confidence and is sure in an instant that it is so much more than that. 

“What are you doing here, Professor Radcliffe?”

“I was looking for something new for my apartment, art would really liven up the place, at least that’s what I’ve been told.” 

“Well, then aren’t you going to invite me there then, to liven it up?”

 

*

 

She gave him her business card.

A silly thing. A half notion before she slipped out the door, because between bouts of mindblowing sex he did mention that he was serious about purchasing art for his apartment and Agnes wouldn’t mind seeing him again.

It wasn’t like she was thinking about him. 

Not really, that would be absurd, it was nothing more than a one night stand, but if perhaps her next painting called to mind the memory of that night then who was to blame her for seeking inspiration wherever she could find it.

Surely, not any of her friends.

Surely, not the man who had just stepped into her studio, with her business card in one hand a bouquet of pink flowers in the other. 

“Professor Radcliffe?”

“It’s Doctor actually,” he corrects, “Holden is fine though.”

Yes, she remembered, she had called him that a lot on their one night together. 

“I - you gave me your business card to come by.” 

“I left it on your nightstand before slipping out in the morning,” Agnes corrects him, “There’s no need to sugar coat it.” 

His grin seems to match hers and for a second she feels something. A real connection, proof that this was meant to be so much more than just one night. That she wasn’t wrong to be sketching out vague memories of him over a week after their one night together. 

“Take me out for lunch,” she says, it’s an invitation technically, a need for another chance with this man.

“Right now?” 

“Unless you had some other plan?

“No that’s, I was going to ask you to dinner, but lunch works.” 

“Perfect,” she replies, putting down her pallet. She should wash off her brushes. Clean off her space, but there would be time for that when she got back. She doesn’t want to wait a second longer than necessary. 

“What is is you were working on? I didn’t mean to stop you.”

She can’t say it’s him. That her muse is standing right there in her studio in front of her. That would be too much even for her, so she offers him just the smallest hint of a smile and says, “It’s my passion project.” 

 

*

 

She can’t remember the last time she felt anything like this - if ever. It’s all consuming, the first real true burst of inspiration that she’s had in years and because of another person. Because of  _ him _ . 

“Another date with your sugar daddy,” her roommates asks, jolting Agnes out of her brief moment of self reflection. 

“He’s not my sugar daddy,” Agnes says far too quickly. He’s more her  _ muse _ or well sort of a  _ sponsor _ since he seems keen on single handedly buying every piece she creates but - “He’s not.”

“It’s cool that you’re into older man, Agnes, no judgment. We’ve all been there, whatever it takes to get the finding” 

The no judgment only makes it sound a little more judgmental.

She narrows her eyes at her roommates, “Holden is different. We go out on dates and I’m romanced, properly, like those girls in the movies. He buys my art because he likes it not because it’s an equivalent exchanged for the - I’ll have you know - mind blowing sex that we have on a daily basis.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

 

*

 

It’s not that what her roommate said had stuck with her it was just that, they were at some fancy restaurant without prices on the menu drinking wine that  _ tasted  _ expensive while she wore a designer dress and it just has to be said. 

“So, just to be clear, you’re not my sugar daddy,” she says before taking a pointed sip of her wine, handling the situation with grace and class.

Something Holden does not manage.

He nearly chokes, which she thinks is a positive sign. 

When  he’s settled himself enough, and still looks a little pained he asks, “Did you think that this was … that?”

“No, god no-”

“Bloody hell, Agnes-”

“My roommate did.”

And there is is that small panicked look again, charming really, sort of cute. 

“I just wanted to make it clear,” she continues. “I’m sleeping with you because I want to sleep with you not because you bought my art.”

“I’m glad, I-”

“Not finished.” 

He makes a vague nod of acknowledgement and she takes it as her cue to continue speaking. 

“I work as a waitress to fund my art and I know it’s not glamourous, but I have my life together. I don’t need a rich man to pay all my bill and support me. I let you pay for things because you’re my boyfriend-” though it felt weird to call a man like  _ Holden Radcliffe  _ her boyfriend “-Well, partner. It’s nice that you take me to places like this and keep promising to show me the world, but I don’t need that. I’m happy here with my art, waiting for my big break, maybe even considering applying for a job at a museum but…”

“That would be lucky to have you.” 

“They would,” she agrees with a small grin, “And you are, lucky you have me.” 

“The luckiest man in the world.” 

It’s with that that she finally asks the one question that had been on her mind since that night that they first met. “Why did you choose me at the gallery showing? That first night we met.”

She meets his eyes as she asks the question, needing his answer, needing it to be honest because she wants to put herself out there, wants to be able to take the next step in this relationship to make it so much more, but she hesitates. 

Hesitates long enough to let her confident smile slip just a fraction.

His hand reaches across the table instantly, to hold onto her, squeezing with reassurance she isn’t certain that she needed. 

“Because you looked like the only real person there, and I’m so used to working with people that aren’t real.” 

 

*

 

“Another conference,” she asks, trying not to pout too much, but she’s currently in his bed watching him get dressed and it is admittedly a little disappointing. Though she can’t say that she minds the view. “Why must you always go to them?” 

“It’s very important for my research,” he says. 

As if they have not had this discussion what seems like a hundred times.

As if she does not already know his answer.

As if this was not usually the part where she insists that  _ she  _ is very important. 

He beats her to speaking, a deviation from the familiar script. 

“Come with me.” 

“I have a shift at the bar tonight.” 

He still doesn't like her waitressing job. She can see it in his face every time she’s mentioned, but he’s so far refused to comment on the fact that she hardly needs it. The girls at the bar have, through implications she’s still ignoring. The job gives her autonomy, something she appreciates but it also keeps her from doing things she’d very much like to do. 

They’ve been together for months, maybe it wasn’t the worst idea in the world. 

“Usually people give two weeks notice,” she muses. 

“For taking a sick day?”

“For quitting,” she corrects. 

She can see the way he falters in his hunt for his suit jacket. Looking back at her with something that is far too hopeful, far more than she deserves. 

When he says, “Come to Paris with me.”

It’s so incredibly easy to say, “Yes.” 

 

*

 

Traveling with Holden is an experience. She doesn’t know the least bit about the science behind it, all the conferences they go to, but it’s what drives him. There’s no way to deny it, when they’re standing in a room, and he’s showing off his latest creation with so much pride in his voice that she can feel it too. She wants to understand desperately, even though she never has before. Asking question on the plane to each new location.

She still teases him about those words - his  _ passion project _ . 

They go to Paris.

To Rome.

To Sao Paulo.

To New York City.

To London.

To so many places she’d never been before, only read about, seen pictures of.

She still misses Australia like an ache she will never be over, held off only by his promises that they will return from the conference tour winds down, when there’s less work to be done. 

For all she says it though she doesn’t mind not really. Here exploring the world is more inspiration than she ever thought that she would find. She spends the hours that they’re not at conferences, or that they’re not together in bed, with a sketch book constantly in hand.   

She calls it her own passion project with a tilt of her lips, a private joke between the two of them.

They’re in Paris of all places, standing waiting for a train, standing in front of a painting that would later hang on her wall. When she says it - “I think I’m in love with you.” 

A casual slip up.

A certain truth. 

One that she had known for a while and yet somehow never yet managed to say, but saying it is so easy, saying it feels right. 

They miss their train, she’s so caught up in the moment, in being young and in love, in a city built for lovers that she forgets all about the rest of the world. She could live forever in the moment and be happy.

 

*

 

The problem is happy moments don’t last forever.

No matter how much she would want them to.

No matter how much they deserve them to. 

It feels like nothing, a glitch, the world freezing for just a moment, enough to make her stumble over her words. Maybe twenty seconds where the world just stops. Under normal circumstances it might have gone unnoticed, undetected for months longer, it had, they’d happened before, her paint brush hovering in air a moment longer than she’d intended, but she’d spent so long writing them off as nothing. 

However, here talking to Holden, freezing in the middle of a sentence, cannot be missed.

Nor can the instant look of concern on his face when she comes back to. The passing of time for her an unnoticeable thing. 

The tail end of her sentence falling short, when met with his overwhelming concern. 

“How long?” 

“Just a few seconds, Agnes-”

“It’s fine.” 

“Has this happened before?”

For some reason, she hates the concern in his voice, hates that she has to listen to it, because she knows it will only grow. He will only be more concerned with her and there’s no way of escaping this. No way of living forever in the happiness that they have built with each other. No way of traveling the world and just forgetting that this moment ever happen.

She nods her head slowly, because it’s easier than speaking. 

This time it’s his turn to ask, “How long?”

“A few months.”

“Agnes, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” she says, when it’s so much more than that.

She didn’t want to think about it, what it might mean.

Her mother had died when she was a young girl, a sickness they couldn’t prevent, a family history that Agnes now carried within her, genetic make up come to take her happiness away too quickly to account for. There was a reason she hadn’t dwelled on it, why she had pushed it all aside and focused on her art, on his research, on exploring the world, on being with the man that she loved. 

“We should get you to a hospital.” 

That’s when it all starts.

 

*

 

Sixteen months if she’s lucky.

A little over a year.

They’re in London and it’s raining and she has little over a year left to live. 

Realizing this, hearing this, gives her an almost numb feeling. It spreads through her, a sudden awareness that this is the end, that she’s twenty-six years old and that she’ll likely be dead before she turns twenty-eight. 

All those months of going to different doctor’s of seeing his worried looks was supposed to have been worth it, they were supposed to be able to find a way to fight this. Except there isn’t a way to fight it.

Chemotherapy won’t help.

Inoperable. 

Inevitable. 

Sometime between the doctor telling her and getting into Holden’s car to head home the world has seemed to shut down. It all crashing at once into nothingness. She feels like she’s freezing up again, an absence seizure that could last for over a year.

She’s not sure she would mind anymore.

And yet, she forces herself to stay present. To stay in the moment because she has so few left. 

Though listening to Holden talk does not actually help - “I’m a scientist, Agnes, I’m not just going to give up on you. Inoperable is just a term doctor’s use when they’re not good enough, but I am, or I will be - you’ve seen it, together we’ve made leaps and bounds with my work, if I can build artificial lungs there’s no reason a measly brain tumor will stop us. I’ll fix you, I-”

“You can’t fix me,” she never expected herself to sound this angry, but the words are out there in an instant.

Sharp and harsh. 

She’s going to die and he’s making this about him. 

“Agnes, I didn’t mean-”

“I’m calling a cab,” she says quickly, because they’re at a stop sign, and he hasn’t started driving again, and she can’t be in the car with him right now. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s raining, you’ll catch your-”

“Finish that sentence, Holden, I swear to god.”

He seems to realize about the same time she does, face paling ever so slightly, illuminated by the streetlights outside the car. 

She gets out before she can change her mind. Walks away from him because she needs this, a break to sort herself out. The ability to cry and have it be about her, not about  _ him _ , not about  _ them _ . She was the one dying her. 

She stands there in the rain until she doesn’t want to cry anymore, until it’s hard to tell her tears apart from the rain, and only then does she flag down a cab. 

“Where to?”

A part of her wants to ask for a hotel, to take a night for herself, by herself, in a place where the man she loves can’t look at her with pity in his eyes. But she also needs something else, the comfort of the only person who truly knows her. 

So she rattles it off, the address of the flat they have here in London. 

Spends the car ride planning out what she’s going to say. That this is her life, that this is her choice, that she wants to spend her last days the way they have spent the past two years. In love, and happy, and not worrying about what day will be there last.

She’s determined to say it.

All the way there.

All the way up the elevator to where they’ve been living together.

All the way until he opens the door, looking far more rumpled than he had been hours before, with red rimmed eyes to match her own. 

Suddenly all she can manage to say is, “I don’t want to die.”

 

*

 

She’s accepted it for the most part.

Bu there’s some days where he gives her so much hope that she could believe it. Could believe in a miracle. Could believe in a cure. 

She puts a cup of tea beside his work table. Tries to make sense of the endless notes sprawled out over a table in cramped handwriting. Presses a kiss to his brow.

She has a studio here, at their house in Spain, a small thing with windows that open up to the city and the world, but her hands shake ever so slightly each time she picks up a paintbrush and she sometimes forgets what she’s working on halfway through. 

It’s not easy, but she’s happy.

They’re happy. 

Maybe if this is the end it would be worth it, to die here, in Spain, in a place that she loves with a man that she loves. 

She thinks she could accept that.

Until one day he’s gone. 

 

*

 

It takes two days of radio silence, two days of nothing, before for the phone rings in the middle of the night. She doesn’t care, scrambling to grab her cellphone to press it to her ear, to hear his voice after what had suddenly somehow managed to feel like an eternity without it. 

Why did loving someone so much have to hurt so bad? 

“I’m sorry,” the voice on the phone says, familiar in a way that makes her ache. “I’m so sorry, Agnes.” 

“Then come home, come back to me.” 

“I can’t.”

“Holden-”

“There’s no cure, Agnes. The doctor’s were right, there’s no way to fix this, to fix you-” she still hates those words, but he sounds drunk and tired and she tries not to cry. “I’m sorry I gave you false hope, that I told you that I could do this. I should have left that day at the hospital when you got out of my car, I thought about it, about not being at the apartment about walking out of your life-”

“You don’t get to choose that.”

“I am. Right now, two days ago, I did. I’m not making you better. I’m making you worse. You’ll be happier without me there.”

“I’m dying, Holden, how am I supposed to be happy?”

Suddenly being sad turns into being angry and it’s so easy. Too easy.

“You-”

“I’m dying, alone, without the man I love by my side, because he’s too much of a coward to watch me fade away, because maybe I’m not the beautiful woman he fell in love with, because his  _ passion project _ -” the words have never felt more bitter to her, she’s not even sure how much of what she’s saying she even means. But it hurts, she hurts, and he needs to hurt too. “-Has always been more important to him than I ever was.” 

Hearing his voice break on the other end is only slightly world it, “You know that’s not true.”

“Do I?”

“Agnes, I love you.”

“Then come back here, if you love me, you come back to me.” 

She hangs up the phone before waiting for a reply. 

There’s nothing he could say that could fix this.

Could fix them.

Could fix  _ her _ . 

Her vision is blurry from crying, but there above their dining room table is a print to commemorate the day she finally admitted to herself that she loved that man. Priceless art to mark a priceless day, a priceless love. 

She tears it of the wall in catharsis. 

Throws it away.

Then the rest of it too, his notes still spread over their dining room table, a matching set of coffee mugs, the blanket that he’d wrapped around her shoulders that awful night. 

It doesn’t make her feel any better, not really. 

But at least it feels like something. 

 

*

 

She crosses off the days on her calender and tries to pretend she isn’t counting down to till the end.

She stares at the empty space on the wall, reaches out to the empty space in her bed, feels the empty space in her heart. 

She moves on.

She lives her life.

What little of it that she has left. 

Until SHIELD shows up, until Holden shows up. 

Months too late to change anything. 

But he offers her a world that is theirs, a world without pain, a life for just the two of them. It’s not a cure. Not really, not in the way she used to hope or imagine. 

She still has months to live, she’s counted it down - three months, two weeks, four days.

But what is that compared to forever. 

“What is it then, this world just for the two of us?”

“My passion project.” 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
